New York City Council May Pass Bill for Instant-Runoff Voting

According to this article, the New York city council is studying a bill that would use Instant-Runoff Voting for partisan primaries for citywide office. If the bill passes, voters would then vote on whether to approve the idea.

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New York City Council May Pass Bill for Instant-Runoff Voting — No Comments

I hope they don’t approve that because it will effectively lock out any minor interest groups. Under IRV, the largest vote block always wins, is guaranteed to win every time, so that largest block of voters will win all the districts within the region using IRV, and that’s effectively locking out any third party or independent interest groups.

The damage done by IRV is substantially greater than plurality election systems and has been highly destructive.

If they implement IRV then it may eventually lead to retaliatory actions such the creation of a top two system in California. In California, the City of San Francisco’s use of IRV has probably created a power base for the Democratic Party, who could take every city district election in the city since they are the single most powerful civic group.

Are you interested in representation which is inclusive, nurtures teamwork and unity, and which is an advanced peaceful alternative decision-making alternative to force and violence?

Try pure proportional representation. The 9th USA Parliament has been using it for 19 consecutive years and it works great!

Very truly yours,
–James Orlando Ogle [Free Parliamentary]
Volunteer vote counter for the 9th USA Parliament since August 6th, 1995 and the original joogle from who google derived their name in October of 1997.http://www.usparliament.org

Your scenario is no more fatal to M than the current winner take all election. However, with IRV, M has a much greater chance of coming out ahead than he would under WTA. So why would that be a bad thing. We either have a system that is designed from the beginning to screw M over (WTA) or a system that gives M a fighting chance (IRV). I think I prefer a fighting chance.

I would also like to point out that under your scenario, M gained 32 votes total. That is 1 vote away from being in the second round of counting. Had one of the R-M-L voter simply switched to M-R-L, then M would have come in second. One more vote from either R or L and M would have won.

In actual elections, IRV almost always elects Condorcet winner — including in every single one of about 100 IRV elections in the Bay Area, several of which would have elected a non-Condorcet winner with plurality.